How Embedded Tech Can Change IT's Role

Consider some 75 examples of companies embedding technologies in products, from shoes to showers, in new ways. Embedded tech is finally allowing enterprise IT to generate revenue and growth.

Many CIOs cringe when they hear the term "consumerization." It's bad enough to have to deal with rogue business units and their non-standard applications. Now snot-faced new recruits ask why Facebook isn't the corporate directory, colleagues snipe about how the home HD TV picture quality is better than the office videoconferencing, and there's endless clamoring for a "bring your own device" policy.

Flip that coin over and celebrate. The same employee who's a pain-in-the-rear user is also your company's new consumer, looking for more tech in everything from cars to a hotel stay. And that fact creates incredible new opportunity for IT teams to be more valuable to their companies.

When I started research for my new book, The New Technology Elite, I went in with the assumption that 8 to 10 industries--including autos and medical devices--plus a few outlier companies like Nike with sensors in shoes were leading the way embedding technology in their products and services aimed at a tech savvy consumer. In the end, the book catalogs "smart" products and services in over 75 industries.

Some of the examples in the book:

-- A smart shirt from Under Armour with a removable sensor pack with a triaxial accelerometer, a processor, and two gigabytes of storage to measure athlete performance.

-- The smart version of bifocal or progressive eyeglasses from PixelOptics which alters the focal power of the lens when you tilt your head or tap the frame.

-- The smart hotel room at The Plaza in New York. The iPad in each room allows you to order room service, make restaurant reservations, book wake-up calls, print boarding passes, and control the room's lighting and air conditioning.

-- The smart restaurant--Do (as in Dough) in Atlanta. Not only are paper menus replaced by iPads, the tablets can also be used to tell the valet to pull up your car. The bathrooms boast sinks with iPad "mirrors" positioned on the walls.

-- Moen is making the shower smarter. The IOdigital wall-mounted control panel, with a handheld remote, lets you set and maintain water temperatures and bath levels.

-- USAA Bank pioneered mobile deposits using the iPhone's camera to deposit a check, and it's now partnering with PayPal to let customers pay almost anyone with an email address or mobile phone number.

-- Progressive Insurance offers Snapshot, a small telematics device that connects to the insured car's electronic diagnostic port. It lets Progressive analyze data from the device on your driving patterns and uses that to set your premium, promising savings up to 30% if you're a safe driver.

-- The Hamilton County, Indiana, sheriff's office has a smarter 911 call center. Each agent in the office can view five large screens that simultaneously show call status, caller information, police radio activity and other data--all of which can be shared over radio, phone, Internet, dispatch, and cellular systems.

-- There's a SmartMeter from utilities such as PG&E that lets consumers monitor their hourly energy usage and better manage their electric bills.

Paul, these new smart products are not trying to be cross-functional devices like tablets. They are aiming to replace/morph products in their own industries - cars, showers, sprinklers etc. So individually their markets are established and fairly large in their own right. In fact many of the companies I interviewed are loath to partner with technology vendors. Their comments were who knows our products and our customers better than us? Many of the companies I profile in the book are 25, 50, 100 years old and have made many product transitions before. The difference is this time around their products have more software, sensors etc than ever before. Vinnie

When I think of embedding IT, I'm typically drawn to thinking about staff (not gadget/device) integration at the point of contact, like within an LOB (example: http://bit.ly/ygKZSJ). This is a personnel example of the "physical presence" discussed in the context of gadgets. Embedded gadgets for the enterprise? I remain skeptical. Use of sensors and RFID, I can see. But as for dedicated devices, outside of the multi-function tablet, many of the examples seem like limited opportunities. --Paul Calento http://bit.ly/paul_calento

Among 688 respondents, 46% have deployed mobile apps, with an additional 24% planning to in the next year. Soon all apps will look like mobile apps – and it's past time for those with no plans to get cracking.